scholarly journals BUILDING BETTER LAW: HOW DESIGN THINKING CAN HELP US BE BETTER LAWYERS, MEET NEW CHALLENGES, AND CREATE THE FUTURE OF LAW

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-59
Author(s):  
Susan Ursel

The legal profession faces increasing challenges to the relevance, utility, and acceptance of law and the rule of law as tools of social organization that are important and essential to human beings. Often the issues which challenge law and legal systems seem perennial, obstinate, and intractable. In order to remain relevant to the societies it serves, the law needs to innovate. We need to find new ways of thinking about law as a human designed and deliberate system of social organization. In this context, adopting an innovation mindset is an important starting point. “Design thinking” offers us a description and practice of an innovation mindset that can be and is employed in a variety of professional contexts. This article is an introduction to design thinking, its challenges, and its possibilities for law. It postulates that in fact design thinking as a concept and as a set of techniques is particularly well suited for use in law, and that we actually employ many of its techniques already. The article argues that by bringing these techniques into sharper focus, we can both recognize how we are in some ways using them already, and more importantly, how they can be deployed in even more useful and innovative ways to “build better law” at all scales of the legal endeavour, from individual service to legal systems.

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 573-599
Author(s):  
Alex Batesmith ◽  
Jake Stevens

This article explores how ‘everyday’ lawyers undertaking routine criminal defence cases navigate an authoritarian legal system. Based on original fieldwork in the ‘disciplined democracy’ of Myanmar, the article examines how hegemonic state power and a functional absence of the rule of law have created a culture of passivity among ordinary practitioners. ‘Everyday’ lawyers are nevertheless able to uphold their clients’ dignity by practical and material support for the individual human experience – and in so doing, subtly resist, evade or disrupt state power. The article draws upon the literature on the sociology of lawyering and resistance, arguing for a multilayered understanding of dignity going beyond lawyers’ contributions to their clients’ legal autonomy. Focusing on dignity provides an alternative perspective to the otherwise often all-consuming rule of law discourse. In authoritarian legal systems, enhancing their clients’ dignity beyond legal autonomy may be the only meaningful contribution that ‘everyday’ lawyers can make.


2007 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny Y.T. Tai

AbstractThe Rule of Law is considered a major aspect of modern governance. For every legal system, it is important whether the Rule of Law is attained and how far it has been attained. Though there are various indicators and indexes of the Rule of Law they all have their limitations. This paper reported a study conducted in Hong Kong in 2005, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies, to assess the level of attainment of the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. It is found that the level of attainment is high but a downward trend is also discovered. A main objective of developing this new methodology in assessing Rule of Law, is that it could be used for tracking the development of the Rule of Law in a particular legal system and facilitating comparison between legal systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-76
Author(s):  
Rosdalina Bukido ◽  
Edi Gunawan ◽  
Djamila Usup ◽  
Hayat Hayat

Interfaith marriages in people's lives have been practised in many areas in Indonesia, even if it's not legally registered. The rule of law in Indonesia does not accommodate interfaith marriages. When interfaith marriage happens, the registration system should follow marriage registration either at the KUA (office of religious affairs) for Muslims or in the Civil Registry office for other religions. This study aims to analyse the practice of interreligious marriage in Manado and how they maintain a good marital relationship between the spouse of different religions. This research employs a qualitative approach by collecting data through interviews with 30 informants who practice interfaith marriages in Manado. The results of this research found that many people in Manado consider interfaith marriage as permissible. They argue that religion is a relationship between humans and God, while marriage is related to human beings. The family of different religions based their relationship on the principle of "Torang Samua Basudara" (we are bound through kinship). Based on this principle, the family avoids using religious symbols in their communication that can cause tension and disrupt harmony among family members. The principle of torang samua basudara is the basis for establishing good communication in the family.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Yan Sheng Chen

China’s cultural revolution, which took place in the 20th century, is bound to be one of the major historical events in Chinese history due to its long duration, great destruction and far-reaching influence.The debate on the right and wrong of the Chinese cultural revolution has been going on till today.There is a consensus on the depth of its lessons, but it is difficult to get a consensus on its formation and reflection.This paper analyzes the causes of the Chinese cultural revolution from the perspective of history, culture and system, and analyzes the ways to avoid the recurrence of tragedy, so as to think and study the feasibility of the future construction of the rule of law and the harmonious development of human beings in China.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Nyoman Satyayudha Dananjaya ◽  
Fuchikawa Kazuhiko

This paper aims to examine the protection of the environment in Indonesia which is part of the realization of a law state that guarantees the constitutional rights of its citizens. It is a legal research that reviews Indonesian constitutional and statutory provisions, besides adding a comparative perspective from a Japanese Constitution and legal system. It is found that the concept of a law state in Indonesia does not specifically follow the concept of a law state like what is meant in “rechtsstaat” or “the rule of law”. It has peculiar characteristics which indeed seem to adopt the noble values ??of those two concepts which clearly confesses in the constitution along with the elements and characters stated in it. One of the most prominent characteristics of a law state is the recognition and protection of human rights. In the Indonesian Constitution 1945, human rights as the fundamental rights of human beings have been arranged and compiled which is legally legitimized become constitutional rights. Among human rights, rights related to the environment include essential rights in array of international human rights formulations. Article 28 letter H of the Indonesian Constitution 1945 expressly states the rights to habitable and wholesome environment for citizen. The protection form can be a normative arrangement in the constitution or in a formal juridical through legislation. Protection of citizens' constitutional rights related to the environment is faced with due process of environmental protection that requires consistency in order to achieve the intention and direction of the Indonesian law state itself.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
David Dyzenhaus

InLegality,Scott Shapiro – a leading legal positivist – analyses the problem of a wicked legal system in a way that brings him close to natural law positions. For he argues that a wicked legal system is botched as a legal system and I show that such an argument entails a prior argument that there is some set of standards or criteria internal to law which are both moral and legal. As a result, the more successful a legal order is legally speaking, the better the moral quality of its law, and the more it is a failure morally speaking, the worse the legal quality of its law. It is such moral features of law that Shapiro concedes make it plausible to account for law’s claim to justified authority over its subjects. However, Shapiro cannot, as a legal positivist, accept this entailment. His book thus brings to the surface and illuminates a central dilemma for legal positivism. If legal positivists wish to account for the authority of law they have to abandon legal positivism’s denial that law has such moral features. If they do not, they should revive a form of legal positivism that specifically abjures any claim to account for law’s normative nature.


2007 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Whidden

AbstractTheCyropaediais a biographical account of what Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, knew in order to rule human beings. This essay focuses on Cyrus's twofold Persian education, which consisted of his conventional and heterodox educations. The former emphasized the rule of law, while the latter stressed the need for absolute rule by a single leader. In order to evaluate Cyrus's revolution, one must grasp the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Persian regime that educated him, especially in light of the impressive but short-lived empire he founded. In the end, theCyropaediaunfolds as a deeply ironic work. Despite Cyrus's prodigious wisdom, the empire he founded was for Xenophon neither unequivocally lasting nor good. In this sense, Xenophon's own knowledge rivals and supercedes that of Cyrus, insofar as Xenophon realized that wisdom is no match for the chaotic world of politics, a sobering and realistic outlook still applicable today.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 493-512
Author(s):  
Antonio Pele

In this article, I intend to reframe and qualify Kant’s moral philosophy for the understanding human dignity. Some Kant’s formulas seem to grant to the human being an inherent and absolute worthiness, when they are read (often) in a very decontextualized way. To achieve this objective, I identify the basic characteristics we commonly attribute to the contemporary model of human dignity. This model has some expressions in the axiological field (inherent and absolute worth), and, at the same time, in the legal-political field (cornerstone of human rights and guiding principle of the Rule of law). I intend to see if we can find some of these latter characteristics in the mentioned usages that Kant gives to the term “dignity” and of formulas supposedly connected (“end in itself”, “autonomy”, “humanity”). When contextualizing these expressions, either in the motivations or in the results of Kant’s philosophy, I arrived to the conclusion that Kant was less concerned with the intrinsic worthiness of the human beings, than with establishing the authority of morality.Keywords: Categorical imperative. Human dignity. Humanity. Kant. Rights. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Petro PATSURKIVSKYY ◽  
◽  
Ruslana HAVRYLYUK ◽  
Illia YURIICHUK ◽  
◽  
...  

The article examines the phenomenon of mediation as a value of a developed civil society from the ideological and methodological positions of the anthroposociocultural approach. The general historical conditions of the emergence of mediation and its anthroposociocultural code, paradigmatic types of mediation and the most important properties of each of them are analyzed. The article reveals the value nature of mediation as a Copernican revolution in ideology and methods of constructive resolution of conflicts between individuals and their communities. The conclusions are substantiated that: mediation belongs to the genus of anthroposociocultural values as their qualitatively distinguished type; mediation is functionally related to fundamental universal human values - human rights, the rule of law and pluralistic democracy - as a tool for their protection by human beings themselves in the form of a joint solution of interpersonal conflicts by their own carriers with the help of professional mediators; modern science distinguishes at least two paradigmatically different types of mediation - traditional mediation and narrative mediation; mediation of the first type as a value is applied mainly to the solution of interpersonal conflicts, and mediation of the second type is mainly applied to the solution of conflicts between human communities in polyidentical societies.


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